It might be called the end
of an era. The final assortment (I assume) of POWER OF THE JEDI green-carded,
off-to-one-side-packaged STAR WARS figures have been turning up in ridiculously
short supplies here and there. I had to get mine off of eBay. Fortunately,
I didn't have to pay much over retail for them, thanks to a "Buy
it Now" option.

The assortment is an interesting
one, including a droid, a human pilot, and an Ewok. Interestingly, everybody
but the Ewok is from the very first Star Wars movie.

The droid is named R4-M9,
and is described as an Imperial Astromech Droid stationed on the Star
Destroyer that captured the Rebel ship that was transporting Princess
Leis. You probably saw him marching along with captured rebels, and
probably assumed that he had also been captured. Nope -- looks like
he was working with the Imperials and had been trying to search the
computer banks to find the stolen Death Star plans.

R4-M9 has the typical "fireplug"
body and three legs (one retractable) best-known on R2-D2. Of course,
R2-D2 was part of a series of droids designated by the prefix "R2".
According to the "Star Wars Essential Guide to Droids", there
was a whole host of "R-with-a-number" type droids, and Hasbro
is finally getting around to making more of them. We've seen several
different R2's. There was R2-Q5, the black Imperial droid; R2-B1, the
blue droid; the unnamed red R2-droid that came with Naboo Royal Starship,
and in the 12" scale, the green-highlighted R2-A6.

We've also recently seen
an R3-droid, in the Episode 2 Sneak Preview assortment. This was R3-T7.
The R3's are notable for their transparent domes. And who could forget
R5-D4, with the sort-of squared-off head who popped his cork after being
bought by Luke's uncle from the Jawas. This is the first R4 type droid,
notable for a rather trapezoidal head, and stripes down its front, in
this case, anyway. Oberall it's an excellent droid, and a superb addition
to any Star Wars collection, especially if one is a fan of droids. He
comes with a "mouse droid" accessory, and also has
a transparent light-filtering head that at the proper angle makes his
"eye" seem to glow green. Nice touch.

By the way, according to
the book, there are R6 and R7 type droids, but they're a bit more different
than the others, and to my knowledge have never appeared in any of the
movies.

Next up we have BoShek, a
human smuggler pilot whose only appearance was in the first movie, when
he pointed out Chewbacca to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Mos Eisley spaceport.
According to some fan reports, this was a figure that was
in fairly high demand. Perhaps there's a lot of people building Cantina
dioramas out there and it just doesn't seem right without him, and we've
certainly had plenty of Cantina Aliens over the past few years.

It's a really superb figure
and an excellent likeness, comparing the
photo of the actor on the package to the sculpted head. The body looks
like a recolored X-Wing pilot body to some degree, although the suit
is black instead of bright orange. Accessories include a blaster rifle
and a helmet. It's a fairly basic figure, and a relatively obscure one
except to real Star Wars die-hards, but it's still a nicely made figure,
and if one is a fair completist with Star Wars toys, I would certainly
recommend it.

Finally we have Teebo, an
Ewok. According to the back of the package, Teebo is an Ewok poet, musician,
and mystic. Given the chatter of Ewoks, I can only guess what their
poetry sounds like. It is said that he is a member of the tribes Council
of Elders and led the war party that discovered Han Solo and Luke Skywalker
on Endor.

There haven't been as many
Ewok figures in the modern Star Wars assortment as there were in the
original toys from the 80's, and there's only so much you can really
do with something that looks like a teddy bear with attitude. But the
overall sculpting and detail on Teebo is very nicely done, and the figure
is notable for articulated wrists, so he can brandish his spear properly.
If
you like the Ewoks, then you'll doubtless want to own this figure.

There's a few other figures
that are worth mentioning, that have been turning up very sporadically
here and there as the POWER OF THE JEDI assortment winds down. I'm listing
the above three as the final assortment because (a) I haven't found
them in the stores, (b) they're the most recent ones to turn up, and
(c) most of the eBay auctions list these three in a group with no real
variation on that theme. But there are a few others that are still worth
mentioning.

First up is Eeth Koth, an
Episode 1 character and member of the Jedi Council. He's listed on the
back of the card with these other three, but I actually found him at
K*B Toys as part of another assortment. He's a cool figure with an interesting
semi-human but clearly alien head, and superb overall detail, but the
figure is so drastically pre-posed into a fighting stance that he really
wouldn't be good for much of anything else, and in fact was one of the
early "extreme posed" figures that, along with some early
pictures of Episode 2 figures, has caused something of a fan and collector
outcry on a number of prominent Star Wars fan Web Sites about toning
down this sort of thing.

Next we have Zutton, the
alien formerly known as Snaggletooth. Described as a Snivvian artist
who turned bounty hunter, this figure is one of the best examples of
the greater detail put into you sculpting these days, compared to his
original 1970's incarnation. Snaggletooth, some may recall, was one
of the early "collectible" figures since the first version
made him too tall and
put him in the wrong color costume. But neither original version can
stand up to the superb sculpting work on his 21st century incarnation,
and the articulation is excellent. He even bends at the knees, perhaps
to more comfortable sit on a barstool. And the figure is not especially
pre-posed, either.

Finally we have FX-7, the
Medical Droid. Again, this figure is a superb example of how mich more
detail and effort can be put into modern action figures compared to
their original counterparts. This figure features over a dozen narrow,
individually articulated arms and a vast amount of carefully
sculpted and painted detail. Ironically this is a character that I seem
to recall Hasbro saying a couple of years ago was unlikely to ever be
made, and then they turned this overgrown salt shaker into a true masterpiece
of a Star Wars action figure. If you like droids, you will want FX-7,
and of all of the figures I have reviewed in this report, he's probably
the most readily available.

And so the sun (or suns,
if you're on Tatooine) on the POWER OF THE JEDI line as we move to STAR
WARS EPISODE 2. But the last handful of figures has proven to be a superb
farewell to this aspect of the growing galaxy of Star Wars action figures!